It can be disappointing when your expectations don't align with reality. We have all been there before and know that letdown feeling when things don't have the outcome we expected.
I would say in my life 90% of the time I felt "let down" something better ended up happening that far exceeded my initial expectations. Other times I have to REALLY look for the silver living in the letdown, but if you look hard enough, I promise you it is there.
Last Sunday Joel and I were preparing for the week and knew that we were only five days away from Nolan's surgery.
We were going to be handing our baby over to a surgeon that we weren't meeting until the day of surgery. We would sign a consent for them to do open heart surgery on our 6-month-old, whose heart is just a bit bigger than a walnut.
There is some major anxiety and adrenaline that comes with prepping for the sentence above.
When we got the call last Tuesday that surgery was being moved by a whole week, Joel and I both crashed. The was the second time our reality would not align with our expectations. After taking the day to pull ourselves back together, we sat and talked about the good things that we knew this reschedule would provide:
• We got the surgeon we originally wanted
• Our child was healthy enough to wait
• There was still a possibility we would be home for Thanksgiving
• Our child was healthy enough to wait
• An old friend that is a nurse at CHOA is working on the reschedule day
• Our child was healthy enough to wait
That is what we knew at the moment. We had to focus on the positive.
Tonight, we are back to the preparation. Making packing lists of what we need, and making sure that everything is in order. We will leave here on Wednesday morning at 5:00 am for pre-op we won't be coming home until after surgery.
We are staying downtown the night before surgery because we have to be back at the hospital around 6:00 am on Thursday.
We are ready.
We are ready.
We are as ready as we are going to be.
I would be lying if I told you a small part of us wasn't nervous about the possibility of a third reschedule.
We are praying our expectations will align with reality this week.
Four more days.